Federal judge rules Samsung did not willfully infringe Apple patents

A judge for the US District Court for the Northern District of California [official website] ruled [opinion] on Tuesday that Samsung [corporate website] did not willfully infringe Apple [corporate website] patents. If Samsung was found to have willfully infringed Apple's patents, the $1.05 billion jury verdict [JURIST report] against it could have been increased up to triple that amount [35 USC § 284 text]. The judge's ruling partially abrogates the jury verdict, which had found that Samsung willfully infringed five of Apple's seven asserted patents. However, the judge declined to overturn the jury's findings on validity and infringement and also refused to grant Samsung a new trial on the grounds that the trial was allegedly manifestly unfair. The judge also declined [opinion, PDF] to grant Samsung a new trial last month based upon alleged juror misconduct by the jury foreman. Samsung had alleged [The Verge report] that the jury foreman hid the fact that he had been involved in a lawsuit against a company that Samsung had recently acquired a controlling interest in and that he had revealed in post-trial interviews that he improperly swayed the jury.

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